touch therapy
Nursing’s New Alternative: Therapeutic Touch
{This article was published in the Ohio Council Against Health Fraud Newsletter Vol. 7 (Winter 1996) pp. 2-4. Click on my name above to return to my home page from where you can get to other papers I've written, my interests, or get in contact with me.}
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative healing method growing in popularity among nurses. Over 80 colleges and universities in the United States teach TT, primarily in nursing schools. Proponents estimate that over 100,000 nurses have had TT training in 70 countries. The National League for Nursing, the accrediting body for U.S. nursing colleges, promotes TT through teaching videos. The Department of Defense recently gave a grant of $355,000 to researchers at the University of Alabama to study TT.
Most would agree that someone’s touch is beneficial and comforting, especially when we are ill or anxious. However, TT does not involve physical touch! It involves "the conscious use of the hands to direct or modulate, for therapeutic purposes, selected nonphysical human energies that activate the physical body" (Krieger, 3-4). Thus, TT is yet another alternative healing practice based on vitalistic notions of universal life energy.
TT was originally developed in the 1960s by Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger, RN, Ph.D. Kunz, a clairvoyant, was then President of the Theosophical Society in America. Krieger was on the faculty at New York University’s School of Nursing and did much to popularized the practice among nurses through teaching and writing. TT is based on the assumption that humans are open energy fields. When these fields are bilaterally symmetrical, we are healthy, but when they are imbalanced, we become ill. TT allows a healer to detect and correct imbalances. To do this, the healer must be "centered" (a form of meditation), and must have strong intentions to help and heal the patient.
Patients sit or lie comfortably. When properly centered, the healer passes his
{This article was published in the Ohio Council Against Health Fraud Newsletter Vol. 7 (Winter 1996) pp. 2-4. Click on my name above to return to my home page from where you can get to other papers I've written, my interests, or get in contact with me.}
Therapeutic Touch (TT) is an alternative healing method growing in popularity among nurses. Over 80 colleges and universities in the United States teach TT, primarily in nursing schools. Proponents estimate that over 100,000 nurses have had TT training in 70 countries. The National League for Nursing, the accrediting body for U.S. nursing colleges, promotes TT through teaching videos. The Department of Defense recently gave a grant of $355,000 to researchers at the University of Alabama to study TT.
Most would agree that someone’s touch is beneficial and comforting, especially when we are ill or anxious. However, TT does not involve physical touch! It involves "the conscious use of the hands to direct or modulate, for therapeutic purposes, selected nonphysical human energies that activate the physical body" (Krieger, 3-4). Thus, TT is yet another alternative healing practice based on vitalistic notions of universal life energy.
TT was originally developed in the 1960s by Dora Kunz and Dolores Krieger, RN, Ph.D. Kunz, a clairvoyant, was then President of the Theosophical Society in America. Krieger was on the faculty at New York University’s School of Nursing and did much to popularized the practice among nurses through teaching and writing. TT is based on the assumption that humans are open energy fields. When these fields are bilaterally symmetrical, we are healthy, but when they are imbalanced, we become ill. TT allows a healer to detect and correct imbalances. To do this, the healer must be "centered" (a form of meditation), and must have strong intentions to help and heal the patient.
Patients sit or lie comfortably. When properly centered, the healer passes his